


Sediment

by ThirteenthHour



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Disillusionment, Family, Friendship, Gen, Queer Themes, Responsibility, Thorin has more baggage than a drag queen on a road trip, Trans, lady!Balin, trans Thorin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:46:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirteenthHour/pseuds/ThirteenthHour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Personal is not the same as important.  Thorin has always known this, but the true meaning of it accrues like layers of silt over the years, and he comes to loathe the part of him that wishes it were otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Iron

"You will be king someday, and a King must remain of clear mind and proper bearing. That said, it is not my place to keep you home if you wish to go carousing."

Perhaps his grandfather meant it honestly. Even so, the idea of attending Balin's New Year party had lost its shine. Thorin stayed in his forge, poring over the intricate wrought iron of his first masterwork. If Alda approved, he would be a blacksmith in his own right. The pragmatism of his choice had elicited praise from his family. He would be king, after all; best to know the foundations of his people's crafts. Goldsmithing, silverwork, jewelling, clockwork...all the higher arts could follow. Higher, after all, did not mean better. So he'd told his father sixteen years ago, when he'd signed the contract for his apprenticeship.

What he didn't say was that he loved the strong and simple beauty of ironwork - loved that the motions of it formed not a haggle but a dance, as dwarves dance, their booted feet driving out a rhythm like the heartbeat of a god, their shadows flowing like rivers in the torch-light. He loved the smell of hot iron and steel and the burn of exertion limning every contour of his body. 

He loved to show what he made and see it used, its beauty all the greater for its pragmatism - perhaps an iron pan whose handle described a twisting root, or a firedog in shape echoing the flames it tended, but just as often a miner's mattock or a surgeon's scalpel whose elegance came not from decoration but from sleek functionality. Perhaps it was practical to learn the heart of his people's crafts; if so, in this, love and pragmatism were one.

He did not miss the party, really, nor any thereafter. Though a quiet youth (and though, like any dwarf, he'd come of age upon earning his journeyman's braid, by measure of years he had not yet finished growing) he had several close friends and loved them dearly, but preferred their company in ones or twos. Give him a quiet evening by the fireside with a tankard of ale, a day in Balin's studio helping her work glass, or out hunting venison in the high hills north of Erebor...that would be better than all the festivities in Middle Earth.

Far later he might think that, even before...before everything, parties made him nervous, but a part of him wished (though he loathed the idleness of wishing) for love of his friends and for what sense of belonging a prince could find, to have that choice. Oh, as Thror said, and Thrain too, he was allowed. 

To be a king of dwarves, though, is to practice the art and craft of kingship, and dwarves are above all else a people who make. It was simply not his place.

Still, it ached to see friends gathered, laughing, singing, drinking, all together..hurt worse to see their faces fall when invitation turned to no, well, I guess you're right, you do have obligations - maybe next time? So Thorin, who even more than most dwarves hated to lie, grew skilled in the art of excuses sound enough that sometimes even he almost believed them.


	2. Silk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin's coming-of-age precipitates a conversation with his father, and the outfall of it adds another layer toward what will become the legendary warrior-king Thorin Oakenshield.

Like any Khazad stepping into adolescence, he signed his apprenticeship with - for the first time - the term of lineage denoting gender and relation. Dwarves are practical folk who see little point in assigning identity for those who haven't lived long enough to choose for themselves and, in an understating way, this selection was as much a coming-of-age as the all-important apprenticeship.

Because of this, or despite this, Thorin didn't know, his hand shook as with a linear stroke of a raven's quill across creamy parchment he finished his part of the dual ceremony with the signature of Thorin, male son and selected heir of Thrain son of Thror. His hand may have shaken, but he felt a surge of pride that the pen's stroke didn't show it; when he lifted the document, though, to pass it to his father, the surge coalesced into a cold lump of queasiness that plummetted like lead to the pit of his stomach. The paper didn't just shake. It rattled.

Thrain, bless him, said nothing of it. Then again, Thrain said nothing as he read it, either - surely, being a kind man, he meant it as a mercy - but, expressionless, affixed his seal and passed it to his heir's now official employer. Thorin knotted his hands around the sick sweat in their palms and focussed on not vomiting. If only Thrain had given anything at all, any sign of approval or worry or...or _any_ thing...

...but there was no point in dwelling.

His father kept him in suspense until after supper. Thorin slogged through it with both the appetite born of his first full day in the forge and an immense gratitude for that hungry work, for neither the good rich stew of jewel-bright root vegetables and fine white-fleshed fish, nor the spiced cider, aglow like amber in the torchlight - a favourite of his, and served in quiet familial celebration of his accomplishment - gave him any pleasure on their way down to swell the cold knot in his gut.

As ever, the royal children helped clear the dishes. Little Dis looked smug that Thorin almost dropped his, while _kir_ own did not so much as clatter. Thorin offered _kir_ a gaunt smile. Good for Dis. If Frerin noticed anything amiss, _kie_ said nothing, but _kir_ gold-grey eyes searched Thorin's worriedly before _kie_ kissed their mother on the head and slipped off to, theoretically, _kir_ studies. Thorin watched _kir_ depart with fear so heavy it felt like grief.

Thrain cuaght him in the hallway with a tray of cups in one hand, and clapped him on the shoulder, smiling down at him from under worried eyes.

"You can deal with the binding, in so rough a trade?" Like most dwarven questions, this one came with no preamble. Thrain glanced pointedly down at his newly declared male son's chest, now bound flat but rapidly developing. Thorin flushed furiously as his father looked back up to his face, but kept his voice low to match his father's.

"If I couldn't, I wouldn't have - "

" _Hush_." 

Thorin didn't quite bite his tongue, but he did clamp his jaw so hard it wouldn't have surprised him if Thrain remarked upon the sound of his teeth grating. It hurt much less than the underlying terror.

"You well know you wouldn't be the only one." Not _wouldn't,_ thought Thorin desperately. Won't. Am not. "It's easy to tell who the others are, by how they favour their ribs." He tried to edge in a defense, but Thrain's raised finger forestalled him. "They are not wrong, not cowards - but remember, Thorin, you are my heir, who shall be King under the Mountain. It falls to you to set an example, even in how, and if, you show pain."

The finger lowered, but Thorin's words had long since dried up. He nodded, mutely, teeth still clamped but now on he knew not what. Whatever it was, it escaped as a yelp of surprise when his father pulled him into a tight hug. Thrain's heartbeat echoed through him and he felt the hoarseness barely audible in his father's voice.

"I'm proud of you, son."

"I'm proud to _be_ your son."

He didn't point out, then or ever, that that embrace left his ribs bruised. Though he'd always been a quick study, it took practice to ingrain that habit - don't show pain unless it serves some purpose. Don't mention it, even in passing, even when everyone else is bonding over a good kvetching session after a hard day in the mines. Don't let on you're hurting, unless those watching need assurance that it's all right to hurt.

After Smaug, though, he never forgot. Not until the dust of Azanulbizar had settled and its corpses buried or picked clean, its wounded treated and searchers sent out for the lost, not until they'd found a place and work - how ever meagre - to tide them over for the coming winter, did Crown Prince Thorin, who would be King as soon as his last hopes for his father ran out of excuses, let on what a mess Azog had made of him. The pain centred him, amidst the deluge of his people's grief and shock as well as his own, and for that he was grateful. It meant he was doing his job.


	3. Salt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The purpose of a king is to serve his people, and a prince is but a king in waiting.

Some imaginative or homesick soul had named the town Aspen. Given that its dry shallow soil, under a relentless wind, grew nothing taller than a gnarled juniper, Thorin's guess rested upon homesick, and he couldn't help a pang of empathy for them, whomever they may have been. It was a homesick sort of town - a human thumbprint in worn adobe amongst low tired hills that remembered when they had been waves. His people found in the ruddy clay shells like horns, shells like cupped hands, shells all of which had turned to stone, but in the town of Aspen they found no welcome and no work.

"Unless you want to waste your skills on nails and horseshoes," growled Balin in a torrent of uncharacteristic bitterness, wadding her outer coat and flinging it as hard as she could into her bedroll. 

She must have found it - the bitterness, not the coat - where the rest of them did, somewhere in the wastelands, as the wounded and weakened died one by one. With them they buried some who bore no physical hurt; young hale dwarrows who simply...stopped. Many of the others would with adequate care have recovered, but perished within sight of Mirkwood. Thorin's mother numbered among them, from working herself to the bone, despite her own wounds, to tend those who were worse off and spread the weight of leadership among her family rather than letting it crush any one of them.

Thorin thought he should have asked someone, then, where they found anger, how they mined for bitterness. Sometimes, someone else's rubbed off on him but he could not seem to come by any of his own, and he didn't grudge Balin hers. For now, he offered a fleeting smile to a red-clad shoulder as she rummaged for ink and parchment. 

The next morning, he woke shivering from a shallow sleep and tied back his hair, slipped into his scorched leather apron and heavy boots, and made his quiet way between his people's tents and across the stretch of twisted little trees into the town of Aspen.

At this hour, nothing moved but the ever-restless dust and the muttering wind that stirred it. A rooster opened one reptilian eye and grumbled at him; Thorin thought, _go back to sleep_ , and for all he didn't say it (words had grown cold and heavy, since Smaug came, and fit ill inside his mouth; it felt as if his lips had frozen shut,) the bird shuffled in his feathers, stuck his head under his wing, and subsided.

"Why are you here?" barked the blacksmith through a crack in the door."

"To work."

"There's only one of you. I've need of four." Unspoken: _and you're little. You're little and hairy and strange and I don't know you._

_I don't know me either._

But a king must be a leader, not a ruler. A king belongs to his people, and must provide - in food, in work, and in example, so Thorin, in whom Smaug had broken the habit of meeting people's gaze, looked him in the eye.

"One is better than none."

At day's end he stumbled, black with soot-stained sweat, into a dusty little town awash with gold. The late sun poured itself out through the narrow streets, leaving pools of indigo shade in which here and there old men sat, staring at him impassively through the blue smoke of corncob pipes. 

Gilded, with lapis shadows, Thror waited for him by the well at town's edge.

"You're bruised." Thorin involuntarily touched the blackening crescent spreading over his cheek. Exhaustion left his body light and numb, but his grandfather's weighty gaze upon that mark of a startled horse's hoof grounded him. He knew it must be his fingers reminding the bruise to ache, but felt them only as an extension of that look - accusatory? concerned? He couldn't tell.

"Youve been farriering. Making nails. Menial labour, for a common smith. Apprentice work. Do you offer insult to your craft?"

Despite the forge's heat, ice had again sealed Thorin's voice. Mutely he reached without looking into his apron pocket and drew out the waxed linen pouch of his day's pay. It reflected, a pale gleam in Thror's dark eyes, held forth in his grandson's grimy hand.

He accepted the offer, and the coins chimed softly as he poured them into his palm.

"Food," rasped Thorin. "Medicine. Firewood."

Whatever he'd prepared for, it wasn't for Thror to hug him hard and tight. Thorin, near grown if not fully so, stood half a head taller than most dwarves, but Thror engulfed him. His great hand, callused hard as stone, cupped the back of Thorin's head as easily as when he'd been a child. As he stroked Thorin's curly dark hair, sweat-loose and straggling, the rough edges of his palm snagged gently. Thorin forced himself to breathe evenly, the scent of cooling clay and sandstone underlying his own forge-stench and the gold, onyx and leather of his grandfather's monumental presence.

The effort proved vain. His eyes burned and his throat tightened, even before Thror spoke. His gravelly bass rumbled up past the heartbeat resounding through them both.

"You do us proud, lad."

And though he couldn't speak, although he couldn't even bear to think of it, Thorin leaned into that solid warmth. It might have melted the jagged cold inside him, but for his traitor self that thought, for all this loss, at least he had his grandpa back.


	4. Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every now and then, but far too often, Thorin allows himself to fail.

Dwalin calls him arsemunch when he's worried. It's part of their unspoklen covenant and token of their first clearly remembered meeting and the profound friendship born of mutual badgering conceived, decades ago, by a know-it-all child harassing a bemused adolescent prince. That friendship runs deep enough that words pale, as they do for everything of such significance, and though Dwalin would make it so at the slightest gesture or at one longing glance from weary eyes under grumpy brows, there is no romance to it. Thorin is the big dwarf's king, body and soul...and Thorin, a king who does not rule but leads, belongs equally to all of them, not only to this dear friend.

It is their greatest strength and vulnerability. They skirt it in word and gesture like a star dimly seen, which will vanish if looked at directly - or the sun that, if you stare at it too long, will sear itself into your eyes and become forever all that you see. Thorin, whose scars inside and out leave him wary of rough contact, lets Dwalin greet him with a head-butt that would daze a goat, and Dwalin calls him arsemunch when he's worried about him.

"Y'all right there, arsemunch?"

"In case nobody told you, it's advisable to sleep occasionally. Arsemunch."

"It's arsemunches like you make me think we need regular mealtimes. D'you think you're a fuckin' plant or something? If you don't eat this now I'll sit on you and cram it down your throat."

Only when his king can't hear him does that change.

"My poor king...stay with us, lad. I won't let nothin' hurt you any more." And Thorin wakes to tenderness, cradled against a broad warm chest and the smell of sweat and leather, with great arms wound protectively around him and a huge hand hard as horn so very carefully stroking his blood-clogged hair. There will be a last sliver as he surfaces, with a start and a strangled cry - "Shh, Thorin, laddie. S'all right. We're safe - "

And then he opens his eyes to Dwalin's dark ones squinting down at him. "You decided to rejoin us, arsemunch?"

Thorin just rasps at him, but Dwalin laughs like an incipient rockslide and sets him down.

"Good. All those stones in your head are getting heavy."

To resent that retreat never occurs to him. He tells himself it only hurts to breathe because he took a morningstar to the ribs, or because the skeletal distortion from years of binding is flaring up. 

He knows the topography of Dwalin's voice much better than his own. In his bones he feels the geology of his friend's heartbeat. In some cold winter long ago, they shared their breath, one exhaling life into the other. Thorin doesn't recall which of them had nearly drowned, dragging a human child from the current running swiftly under black ice. It doesn't matter. True fear gives Dwalin's voice a sharp brittle edge, like obsidian, and just like that it drags out his own frozen voice into the living world.

"All's well, Dwalin." Even if he can't bring his eyes to open, even if his lips are numb, even if with each breath pain rings him like a gong. "I'm here, it's all right. Are you hurt?"

"No, but dammit, arsemunch, don't do that! You almost had me worried there."

And Thorin thinks he smiles, maybe. Dwalin's relief should make it easy. The big warrior's trust is a constant pang - to take advantage of such devotion is worse than un-kingly, worse than subhuman. That doesn't stop him, though. Not often - he can count on one hand every time in both their long lives they've done so - and never when Dwalin is truly terrified for him, but even once is too many, and the world holds no baser coward than a traitor king...but once in a while he'll lie still in Dwalin's arms when his friend thinks him unconscious and let himself be held, safe and loved, as if it is not his purpose to carry his people thus. Every once in awhile, Thorin allows himself to fail.

His grandfather would hate him, but his father might forgive him, and it is that thought that pains him worst.


End file.
